What’s the most addictive game?

I felt like I shouldn’t play the Madden video game for the sake of my relationship.

Madden made 5.3% of my life disappear in 2003-2004. I’m not kidding. I did the math. And that’s counting sleeping hours so it’s more like 7% of my waking hours. It was great for my relationship with my roommate, but not for the one with my girlfriend. Anyhow…

What’s the most addictive game you’ve ever played?

It doesn’t have to be a console or computer game, anything from RPGs to Spin the Bottle to Hide and Seek. As long as it was – or still is! – endangering your social life.

Leave a comment! (And, no, this doesn’t have anything to do with D&D, really. But Mr. Gnome wrote a great article about the Top 10 D&D Computer RPGs.)

Expy is the mascot for DungeonMastering.com and the real mastermind behind Expy Games. He likes to hoard treasure, terrorize neighbors, burn down villages, and tell white dragon jokes..

No matter how fearful the legends claim dragons are, they always end up being defeated in 5 rounds by adventuring parties they encounter. That’s what dragons are – experience points for the heroes in your Dungeons & Dragon party. And this mascot is no different, hence the name Expy.

Everquest, I discovered it when I was about 13 years old and it had a very negative effect on my grades and social life. I don’t blame games though, it is up to the person to find balance in his or her own life. Eventually I did that. I still play MMOs although I do it with my friends and/or my girlfriend now. It is just like any other leisure activity, not some all consuming maw.

From way back when I’d have to say it was Pool of Radiance. I was in the military when it came out and I played it on a mono-chromatic screen…everything was shades of green and black. I played before PT in the morning after PT in the morning…before Breakfast and after Breakfast and for hours after work each day. I tried every class in the game over and over again.

Yet the game that sucked my sould was City of Heroes. This game alsmost cost me my marriage, a house and all things that make us adults. Now I’m waiting on Champions Online

Assassin H2O, a real life water gun assassin game ran for 3 weeks and kept me inside my house most of the time. Paranoia set in after a few days. Peeking out the blinds, scrambling to my car if I had to go anywhere. Always watching my back when I was out and eyeing anyone that looked suspicious. I ended up getting 2nd place out of about 50 people in a downtown showdown.

Call of Duty1 and 2 might have helped end my marriage.
In 1994, my first modern pc, SimCity2000 11 hrs no food, no bathroom, day = GONE
It only took me 9 months to put the WoW needle away, though the thirst for it still lingers.

We used to call Heroes of Might and Magic 2 “The Bad Thing”, and we would delete it from our computers while drunkenly proclaiming “Never Again”. And then we would re-install it. Civ 1 pretty much cost me my starting spot on the basketball team in grade 11. I literally played it all Christmas vacation.

if it weren’t for the fact that D&D is in fact a social gathering, I’d have to say it was a three way tie.
But fortunately D&D gets me out of the house so I’d have to say Lineage 2 and Civilizations IV.

I have to quote Saragon.
Muds, imho, are the most addictive games: especially text-based ones.
The true sensation that game never ends as the scroll flows and you read what’s happening to your character, interacting with other people in a kind of roleplay that’s really difficult to find playing D&D on a table.
The atmosphere is vivid, maybe because it’s limited in the client window.

Heroes of Might and Magic 3. I was on winter break when it first came out and my cousin and I played that game for three days straight without seeing the sun (we live in Hawaii). It was pretty bad… We were big into the first two in the series but the third one was unreal.

I’d say I’m addicted to my computer period. I’m currently on disability and I spend about 5 to 6 hours a night either playing video games, surfing the net, or on facebook. It’s probably gonna cost me my marriage.

This probably doesn’t count, but for me it’s Divinity 2: Ego Draconis. It’s a game still in development by Larian Studios, and I’m one of the gameplay software developers.

Okay, so it puts food on the table, but it’s still stealing a lot of quality family-time. Working in the video game industry is *exactly* what they say it is: a lot of fun but a hell of a lot of hard work.

in cronological order
Civilization II (always missed my classes in high school)
Civ II
Neverwinter Nights I(with expansion) – to the point I prefered play when I could be with my girlfriend!
REALLY adicting!

Why do people keep omitting Civ 1? I mean, holy crap man, I think I put in at least 8 hours a day throughout most of high school… well, that and X-wing… It’s still available for purchase via “Civilization Chronicles” a boxed set with civ 1 through civ 4 for a very reasonable price depending where you get it… although I can’t play it on my computer because of my 64bit processor… I SO need to get an emulator or something….

Arguably, the Civilization games should be regulated by the DEA as a narcotic. So many times I’ve thought I’ll just play a quick little game of Civ, only to look at the watch and see two hours gone from my life. The only other game that did that to me was StarCraft, but I haven’t played that in a long time. Civilization is a classic that will endure for centuries.

What’s more, anyone can play it. It has mass appeal. I got my own mother to play Civilization IV, and she doesn’t ordinarily play video games. Every now and then I’ll find her building up the Mongolian Empire conquering her friends on GameSpy. How cool is that?

Not that Madden isn’t cool. I like Madden, but Madden hasn’t enthralled me like Civ.

Superbowl weekend? Pfft. I was watching Georges St-Pierre totally own BJ Penn at UFC 94. :P As for addicting games, I’m a total crackhead for Age of Mythology: Titans, Civ 2, Diablo 2, and Neverwinter Nights.

I’ve never really had the problem with addictive games, probably because I have such a short attention span. I suppose the closest for me was World of Warcraft, but I always made sure to log off like an hour before I had to go to work, and I think I only played it during summer and winter breaks so it wouldn’t interfere with classes. I also only really played it with my boyfriend and his friends; I would get bored easily if i played it alone (I hate playing and grouping with people I don’t know, I just feel weird about it).

I would have to say Halo 2 and Halo 3. I wouldn’t count Halo 1 simply because of social gatherings to get the lan going. Recently, Dota at my local lan center ,8wirelan. my girlfriends hates when I spend my friday nights playing Dota. Too much money spent to play at the same place as everyone else.

aion looks nice!i like it ,a lot of people waiting it,i see sameone are ready for sell aion gold already.it likes call aion kina in game,or aion money,:P,it’s hard to boring aion gold in game ?i don’t like that ,i think it will greater than wow!it will be best.

Video games:
– Quake III was very addicting for several years, until all the servers became lame. After a while every server was just a noob and/or hacker suckfest!
– Almost 10 years after it’s release, Diablo II continues to be one of the games I’m most addicted to. I can’t wait for Diablo III.
– Deus Ex I & II were both awesome as well; the third episode was supposed to come out sometime in 2009.

RPGs/Board games:
– D&D v3.0/3.5 is great!!! (I had AD&D/v2.0 back in the day, but I was never really all that impressed with it and didn’t really get into it much. And v4.0 just plain SUCKS!).
– Nyambe d20: African Adventures is pretty cool and very unique.
– There used to be a card/dice game called Plague and Pestilence that was based on Black Death/medieval times. It was really fun and a bit silly in a morbid kind of way. It’s out of print now, unfortunately, and almost impossible to find. Chessex was supposed to be re-releasing it, but they keep delaying the release date indefinately, so who knows…
– I also get a kick out of WotC’s d20 Modern/Future.
– And, of course, nothing beats classics like Stratego, dominoes, or an old deck of cards!

It’s a bit late to add to this thread but since my obsession hasn’t been mentioned I’m going for it. 28 years ago Colossal Caves, the text only adventure. It nearly cost me my job. Was shown it on the IBM mainframe at work and for the next 3 weeks – 120 hours work time – I perhaps worked for 20 hours and the rest of the time + before work, after work, and all lunch hour I was in that twisty turning maze of little passages. I had my terminal set up to blank out with one key stroke if I saw my supervisor approaching. After 3 weeks I still played but (mostly) managed to restrict myself to before and after work and during lunch hour.

It was Super Bowl week-end and 2 things jumped out at me:
I felt like playing the Madden video game.
I felt like I shouldn't play the Madden video game for the sake of my relationship.
Madden made 5.3% of my life disappear in 2003-2004. I'm not kidding. I did the math. And that's counting sleeping hours so